Ezra… A Great Lakes Brewery / Amsterdam Collaboration well worth the taste

You got to love a great collaboration. Not so much the end product, but the camaraderie between two major league brewers. Today’s beer of choice is Ezra, named after GLB’s brew master Mike Lackey’s dog. Ezra sadly enough, died on the day the beer was brewed. Ezra is in fact a collaboration between Great Lakes Brewery known for their “666” and Amsterdam, known for their Bone Shaker. The big buzz around this beer, aside from the fact that it’s a collabo, is the Farmhouse Ale twist aged in Cider barrels. That, my friends, makes for an interesting beer. It’s almost a clandestine, secret recipe to reproduce an Orval or a Belgian but with a slightly stronger alcohol kick!

Look: Ezra poured a nice hazy yellow, like straw, with a good inch of head leaving behind great lacing

Taste: From the first sip the citrusy kick happens. It’s a great beer with lots of flavors complementing each other all at once; green apples, spices, peachy, malts, hops and tangy yeast all make this beer a fantastic treat. What I like most about this types of beers is how they tend to get sweeter as they warm up.

Finish: Dry, a little thin with moderate bitterness

Context: Well done. This is one of those beers you don’t buy to quench or drink casually, buy it to savor it.